


truth is heavier than fiction

by mapped



Category: Black Sails
Genre: 4x10, Angst, Episode Related, M/M, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-14 04:56:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10529394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mapped/pseuds/mapped
Summary: “In the dark, there is possibility.”Silver contemplates what might have been.





	

“Israel and Ben will take you there,” he says.

“You’re not coming,” Flint says, quietly.

“No,” Silver says. If he went with Flint, he might have to—see it. Might have to see Flint lay eyes on Thomas again. And for some reason he cannot bear the thought. Cannot bear the idea of knowing what Flint will look like in that moment, when he finally sets his eyes on the man that he has loved for the past ten years and would love through Hell, through the end of days. Cannot bear how it will in fact not be Flint at all, but another man, someone Silver has never known.

James. James McGraw. The name flutters in Silver’s throat, wanting to be uttered. He wants to know the taste of it on his tongue, the shape of it in his mouth.

Instead, he just looks at the man before him, a figure subdued and soft like something formed out of morning mist. About to vanish any moment. About to slip through his fingers.

“So this is it,” Flint says. “This is goodbye. This is where the story of Captain Flint and Long John Silver comes to an end.” His eyes watch Silver.

“I suppose it is,” Silver says. He doesn’t understand the weight in his chest. Flint will be safe and happy. And Silver will go back to the Maroon Island and explain it all to Madi and hope for her forgiveness. The war will be over, and they will never again have to fear for their lives every second of every day. But he looks at Flint, and he just feels there’s a whole ocean inside his ribcage, pounding like waves against a hull. An endless ache that ebbs and flows.

So much they were. He remembers. So much. _In the darkness there be dragons_ , Flint had said. But there are no dragons, Silver thinks. Only he and Flint. In the dark together. That’s what he remembers. The pitch black terror of the Wrecks and Flint’s knife at his throat. The blanket of night sky over the stern of the Spanish warship where they waited for the crew to vote on their fates, and Silver guessed at Flint’s plan to regain control of the ship and offered to play a role in it. The murk in the cage on the Maroon Island as he’d tried to persuade Flint not to sacrifice himself for the sake of the crew. The gloom of the sick bay after he’d bashed in Dufresne’s skull with his metal boot, and Flint had stood by him and wanted to know if he was all right. The scant lantern light barely penetrating through the thick pall of night in the forest, when Flint had given Silver the secret that was the key to this moment, the key to every single one of Flint’s doors. The dim cabin on the _Walrus_ where Flint had called Silver the best of them, the night before their partnership cracked and quickly severed.

So much they were, and so recently. It was only days ago they were still in that dark together, and everything had been possible.

“It was… an honour, Captain,” Silver says, finding all his words inadequate, but soldiering on nevertheless. “I couldn’t believe in your war, because I came to see the futility of it. But… I did believe in you. Please know that. I believed in you.” 

Flint smiles, a thing as wistful as a dying blade of grass. “Not as much as I believed in you,” he says. He takes a deep, shuddering breath. His hands are shackled, but he reaches out and brushes Silver’s hand just for a moment, so gentle and never-there as a shiver of wind, that Silver forgets why it was ever necessary to bind Flint’s hands in the first place. “So long, John Silver.”

Silver is completely thrown. “Was that a—”

Flint almost laughs, a ghost of a huff. “I’ll miss you,” he murmurs, and then he turns and goes with Hands and Gunn.

Silver stays there on the shore, staring until he can no longer see them even if he strains his eyes. The ocean in his ribcage swells and swells.

* * *

Silver returns to the captain’s quarters. There, on the table, a book he had not noticed before, just sitting atop one of the charts. He picks it up. The leather is warm in his hands. The smell of it makes him think of Flint. Books and coats. All leather, all his captain.

The glinting title on the spine pronounces the book _The Odyssey_ , by Homer.

Silver’s throat is closing, his fingers trembling. Where the fuck did Flint get this book from? The cabin is otherwise bare of any books that aren’t logs. Flint certainly couldn’t have had it on him when he boarded this ship, so he must have found it somewhere on the ship. Or he conjured it with his powers. Those supernatural powers Silver has never quite been able to convince himself that Flint doesn’t possess.

Silver drops the book, slamming one fist down on the table and shaking.

He pours himself some rum and takes a few steadying sips.

He picks up the book again.

He opens it very slowly, feeling prickly hot and breathless, as if the cabin were crackling with fire and his throat were catching on smoke. The edge of the page licks at his finger like a flame.

He has seen Thomas’ inscription in Flint’s copy of _Meditations_. Only a scattering of words, and yet they convey more affection than Silver has ever received in his entire life.

Yet that inscription could never have prepared him for this one.

_John,_

_My dearest friend, my illumination in the dark. Thank you._

_– J._

Silver hurls the book at the wall and collapses in a chair and buries his face in his hands.

* * *

He has been coming here every day for weeks now. He has been coming here every day for weeks now, and the sea looks different every day. Merciless one day and then forgiving the next. Sometimes so calm and still it has him thinking about the stink of rotting whale, a boat piled with freshly-killed sharks.

He even sleeps up here some nights, on the grass, a jacket pillowing his cheek; on those nights he brings his lantern with him, to read in the firelight. He has read _The Odyssey_ seven times through by now, from cover to cover. It holds no new insight. But every time he reaches the end he imagines Flint hugging Thomas close, kissing Thomas in broad daylight. And every time, he goes straight back to the beginning and traces the inscription with his fingers. Flint’s neat, curling hand on the ivory page in the warm glow of the lantern, a pocket of golden light against the stretch of everlasting dark.

During the day, it is so radiant out here, everything glaring, the water and the sky so blue and the grass so green it is hard to conceive of darkness at all.

When the sun is blazing, when sweat dampens his shirt and his skin feels near searing, he thinks of flashing steel and a fire-bright beard. Those weeks when he never once considered killing Flint even as they clashed swords day after day. Those weeks when Flint would hold a sword to his throat and he would smile, because trusting Flint came more and more easily to him every day, until it was no different to breathing.

He can’t stop hearing it in his head. _We will have been for nothing?_ He can’t stop seeing Flint’s face. Those wide green eyes, greener than the forest on Skeleton Island.

Flint and Silver. Silver and Flint. The two of them, they were for nothing. They could have been—something, but in the end they were nothing. And yet Flint left him this book, this inscription. Flint _thanked_ him.

Flint thanked him, but Flint said such horrible things to him on that godforsaken island. _She’ll no longer be enough. And the comfort will grow stale._ Looking out at the sea, all alone, no Madi, no Flint, Silver thinks of them both. The way Madi’s face lit up with joy to see Flint again.

Perhaps if Madi will take him back, then he will finally stop thinking of Flint so much. He has to believe that. Has to believe the only reason he thinks of Flint day and night is because he is now totally alone in this world again, and Flint was the first person he had met in a long time who had made him feel that he was not alone.

He stares out at the sea, and he thinks of diving into it to save his captain from drowning.

 _My dearest friend_ , the book says, but Silver thinks, _My truest love_ , and suddenly he feels tears brimming as if the sea below has surged up to him and kissed his eyes. He sees, suddenly, dizzyingly, what they could have been. Flint, hands twitching and eyes intent, lingering in that sick bay after Silver had talked about how good killing Dufresne felt. Flint’s shoulder knocking into his as they walked back to the Maroon camp together after the cache had been buried while Flint’s past was unearthed. So many hitching moments when they had fenced on this clifftop, between shy smiles and gasps of exertion, when Silver might have moved just right, might have spun out of his delicate orbit in order to collide with Flint, but never did.

Even there on Skeleton Island, Flint had been trying to get him to see what the dark might hold for the two of them, if only Silver would have listened. What discovery, what possibility, what _freedom_.

How they might have loved each other, in the dark.

How Silver might have known no shame, and given Flint his past as well as his future. 

How Silver might have been _true_ , for once in his life.

He had wanted to be enough for Madi. God, he had just wanted to be _enough_. It hadn’t occurred to him that maybe Madi wasn’t enough for him either.

And now he will never be anyone’s truest anything. It is not in his nature to be true. But God. He had tried. He had _tried_.

He sits there on the hard, grey rock and cries, thinking of Flint’s eyes, the subtle shade of them always shifting and always beautiful: forest-green, grass-green, sea-green. Always there, all around Silver, in the colour of everything living and tame, growing and wild. He could live inland, get the fuck away from the sea forever and he would never escape it. He could sail for the rest of his life and he would be surrounded by it.

 _My dearest friend_ , the book says, and Silver will have to live with that, knowing exactly what else might have been possible.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry, I had to get the angst out of my system first. I promise there will be happier things next!
> 
> Title from Sleeping At Last - 'The Projectionist'. 
> 
> Comments are really appreciated! <3 Come find me [on tumblr](http://reluming.tumblr.com/) where I'm never going to get over this show.


End file.
